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Eighteen holes of match or medal play will teach you more about your foe than will 18 years of dealing with him across a desk. --Grantland Rice

Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child.  Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five. --John Updike

It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place this world is when one is playing golf. --Robert Lynd

Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad. --A.A. Milne

Golf, like the measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious. --P.G. Wodehouse, A Mixed Threesome, 1922

I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone's golf game:  it's called an eraser. --Arnold Palmer

Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course - the distance between your ears. --Bobby Jones

I'm about five inches from being an outstanding golfer.  That's the distance my left ear is from my right. --Ben Crenshaw

Golf is like a love affair.  If you don't take it seriously, it's no fun; if you do take it seriously, it breaks your heart. --Arthur Daley

Golf is a fascinating game.  It has taken me nearly forty years to discover that I can't play it. --Ted Ray, Golf - My Slice of Life, 1972

The number of shots taken by an opponent who is out of sight is equal to the square root of the sum of the number of curses heard plus the number of swishes. --Michael Green, The Art of Coarse Golf, 1975

If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out. --Paul Gallico

Golf is like an 18-year-old girl with big boobs.  You know it's wrong but you can't keep away from her. --Val Doonican

Golf is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic. --Author Unknown

It's easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister's fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification. --Bruce McCall

Forget your opponents; always play against par. --Sam Snead

If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is. --Horace G. Hutchinson

They say golf is like life, but don't believe them.  Golf is more complicated than that. --Gardner Dickinson

I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf.  I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies. --Will Rogers

If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they'd starve to death. --Sam Snead

Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness. --William Wordsworth

What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive. --Arnold Palmer

The reason the pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can't see him laughing. --Phyllis Diller

Fifty years ago, 100 white men chasing one black man across a field was called the Ku Klux Klan.  Today it's called the PGA Tour. --Author uncertain, attributed to Alex Hay

A game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood. --Author Unknown, plagiarized from the Samuel Johnson quotation "It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring and winter; it is unjust to claim the priveleges of age, and retain the play-things of childhood," which was not written about golf  (Thanks, Frank Lynch)

Golf combines two favorite American pastimes:  taking long walks and hitting things with a stick. --P.J. O'Rourke

The sport of choice for the urban poor is basketball.  The sport of choice for maintenance level employees is bowling.  The sport of choice for front-line workers is football.  The sport of choice for supervisors is baseball.  The sport of choice for middle management is tennis.  The sport of choice for corporate officers is golf.  Conclusion: The higher you are in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls become. --Author Unknown

If you drink, don't drive.  Don't even putt. --Dean Martin

Golf gives you an insight into human nature, your own as well as your opponent's. --Grantland Rice

Golf is a good walk spoiled. --Mark Twain

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles. --G.K. Chesterton

They throw their clubs backwards, and that's wrong.  You should always throw a club ahead of you so that you don't have to walk any extra distance to get it. --Tommy Bolt, about the tempers of modern players

If you break 100, watch your golf.  If you break 80, watch your business. --Joey Adams

Man blames fate for other accidents but feels personally responsible for a hole in one. --Martha Beckman

When I die, bury me on the golf course so my husband will visit. --Author Unknown

I'm not saying my golf game went bad, but if I grew tomatoes, they'd come up sliced. --Attributed to both Miller Barber and Lee Trevino

Duffers who consistently shank their balls are urged to buy and study Shanks - No Thanks by R.K. Hoffman, or in extreme cases, M.S. Howard's excellent Tennis for Beginners. --Henry Beard, Golfing, 1985

Golf is life.  If you can't take golf, you can't take life. --Author Unknown

In baseball you hit your home run over the right-field fence, the left-field fence, the center-field fence.  Nobody cares.  In golf everything has got to be right over second base. --Ken Harrelson

If I can hit a curveball, why can't I hit a ball that is standing still on a course? --Larry Nelson

Golf balls are attracted to water as unerringly as the eye of a middle-aged man to a female bosom. --Michael Green, The Art of Coarse Golf, 1967

If your opponent is playing several shots in vain attempts to extricate himself from a bunker, do not stand near him and audibly count his strokes.  It would be justifiable homicide if he wound up his pitiable exhibition by applying his niblick to your head. --Harry Vardon

A passion, an obsession, a romance, a nice acquaintanceship with trees, sand, and water. --Bob Ryan

Drugs are very much a part of professional sports today, but when you think about it, golf is the only sport where the players aren't penalized for being on grass. --Bob Hope

I'd play every day if I could.  It's cheaper than a shrink and there are no telephones on my golf cart. --Brent Musburger

Columbus went around the world in 1492.  That isn't a lot of strokes when you consider the course. --Lee Trevino

Real golfers, no matter what the provocation, never strike a caddie with the driver.  The sand wedge is far more effective. --Huxtable Pippey

I've spent most of my life golfing - the rest I've just wasted. --Author Unknown

They call it golf because all of the other four-letter words were taken. --Raymond Floyd

My handicap?  Woods and irons. --Chris Codiroli

The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack one too many things. --John Updike

Even God has to practice his putting. --Golf Saying

Actually, the only time I ever took out a one-iron was to kill a tarantula.  And it took a seven to do that. --Jim Murray

The ardent golfer would play Mount Everest if somebody put a flagstick on top. --Pete Dye

If you're caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron.  Not even God can hit a 1-iron. --Lee Trevino

Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun. --Jim Bishop

I'm hitting the woods just great, but I'm having a terrible time getting out of them. --Harry Toscano

I know I am getting better at golf because I'm hitting fewer spectators. --Gerald Ford

"Play it as it lies" is one of the fundamental dictates of golf.  The other is "Wear it if it clashes." --Henry Beard, Golfing, 1985

I just hope I don't have to explain all the times I've used His name in vain when I get up there. --Bob Hope, about his golfing

I can airmail the golf ball, but sometimes I don't put the right address on it. --Jim Dent

It is more satisfying to be a bad player at golf.  The worse you play, the better you remember the occasional good shot. --Nubar Gulbenkian, 1972

Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses. --Adlai Stevenson

I would like to deny all allegations by Bob Hope that during my last game of golf, I hit an eagle, a birdie, an elk and a moose. --Gerald Ford

The first time I played the Masters, I was so nervous I drank a bottle of rum before I teed off.  I shot the happiest 83 of my life. --Chi Chi Rodriguez

A golf course is nothing but a poolroom moved outdoors. --Barry Fitzgerald, Going My Way

I'll shoot my age if I have to live to be 105. --Bob Hope

After all these years, it's still embarrassing for me to play on the American golf tour.  Like the time I asked my caddie for a sand wedge and he came back ten minutes later with a ham on rye. --Chi Chi Rodriguez, on his Puerto Rican accent

My swing is so bad I look like a caveman killing his lunch. --Lee Trevino

Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility.  It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort. --Abba Eban

It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits.  I did it in one afternoon on the golf course. --Hank Aaron, 1971

Swinging at daisies is like playing electric guitar with a tennis racket:  if it were that easy, we could all be Jerry Garcia.  The ball changes everything. --Michael Bamberger

One of the most fascinating things about golf is how it reflects the cycle of life.  No matter what you shoot - the next day you have to go back to the first tee and begin all over again and make yourself into something. --Peter Jacobsen

You are meant to play the ball as it lies, a fact that may help to touch on your own objective approach to life. --Grantland Rice

A golf ball is like a clock.  Always hit it at 6 o'clock and make it go toward 12 o'clock.  But make sure you're in the same time zone. --Chi Chi Rodriguez

Golf isn't like other sports where you can take a player out if he's having a bad day.  You have to play the whole game. --Phil Blackmar

The trouble that most of us find with the modern matched sets of clubs is that they don't really seem to know any more about the game than the old ones did. --Robert Browning, A History of Golf

Golf is the cruelest game, because eventually it will drag you out in front of the whole school, take your lunch money and slap you around. --Rick Reilly, "Master Strokes," Sports Illustrated

Golf is the cruelest of sports.  Like life, it's unfair.  It's a harlot.  A trollop.  It leads you on.  It never lives up to its promises.... It's a boulevard of broken dreams.  It plays with men.  And runs off with the butcher. --Jim Murray

Golf is essentially an exercise in masochism conducted out-of-doors. --Paul O'Neil

Golf is an open exhibition of overweening ambition, courage deflated by stupidity, skill scoured by a whiff of arrogance. --Alistair Cooke

No game designed to be played with the aid of personal servants by right-handed men who can't even bring along their dogs can be entirely good for the soul. --Bruce McCall, "The Case Against Golf," Esquire

These greens are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow. --Sam Snead

Through years of experience I have found that air offers less resistance than dirt. --Jack Nicklaus, on why he tees his ball high.

Golf is not a game, it's bondage.  It was obviously devised by a man torn with guilt, eager to atone for his sins. --Jim Murray

Golf is an awkward set of bodily contortions designed to produce a graceful result. --Tommy Armour

Who watches golf on TV?  Who calls eight friends over and gets a keg of beer?  Landscapers, I guess.  They sit around the TV, yelling, "Will you look at that golf path?  Pure pea gravel." --Jeff Cesario

But you don't have to go up in the stands and play your foul balls.  I do. --Sam Snead, to Ted Williams, arguing which was more difficult, to hit a moving baseball or a stationary golf ball

A hole in one is amazing when you think of the different universes this white mass of molecules has to pass through on its way to the hole. --Mac O'Grady

Trevino is in a league by himself.  We don't even count him.  We figure when you come in second, you're a winner. --Chi Chi Rodriguez

Golf is a game in which you yell "fore," shoot six, and write down five. --Paul Harvey

In golf, you keep your head down and follow through.  In the vice presidency, you keep your head up and follow through.  It's a big difference. --Dan Quayle

You can't call it a sport.  You don't run, jump, you don't shoot, you don't pass.  All you have to do is buy some clothes that don't match. --Steve Sax

The best wood in most amateurs' bags is the pencil. --Author Unknown

One under a tree, one under a bush, one under the water. --Lee Trevino, describing how he was one under during a tournament

The average golfer doesn't play golf.  He attacks it. --Jack Burke

Hockey is a sport for white men.  Basketball is a sport for black men.  Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps. --Tiger Woods

The least thing upset him on the links.  He missed short putts because of the uproar of butterflies in the adjoining meadows. --P.G. Wodehouse

It's so bad I could putt off a tabletop and still leave the ball halfway down the leg. --J.C. Snead, on his putting

Any game where a man 60 can beat a man 30 ain't no game. --Burt Shotten

There are two things you can do with your head down - play golf and pray. --Lee Trevino

Golf is not just an exercise; it's an adventure, a romance... a Shakespeare play in which disaster and comedy are intertwined. --Harold Segall

The worst club in my bag is my brain. --Chris Perry

Golf is a game where white men can dress up as black pimps and get away with it. --Robin Williams, 1986

Golf is hockey at the halt. --Arthur Marshall, 1985

There is one thing in this world that is dumber than playing golf.  That is watching someone else playing golf.  What do you actually get to see?  Thirty-seven guys in polyester slacks squinting at the sun.  Doesn't that set your blood racing? --Peter Andrews


The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf.  It's almost a law. --H.G. Wells, Bealby, 1915

[Golf] is like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture. --Winston Churchill

The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. --Ernest Hemingway

One of the advantages bowling has over golf is that you seldom lose a bowling ball. --Don Carter

I'm a golfaholic, no question about that.  Counseling wouldn't help me.  They'd have to put me in prison, and then I'd talk the warden into building a hole or two and teach him how to play. --Lee Trevino

A "gimme" can best be defined as an agreement between two golfers, neither of whom can putt very well. --Author Unknown

Give me the fresh air, a beautiful partner, and a nice round of golf, and you can keep the fresh air and the round of golf. --Jack Benny

Golf is a game in which the ball lies poorly and the players well. --Art Rosenbaum

Art said he wanted to get more distance.  I told him to hit it and run backward. --Ken Venturi, on Art Rosenbaum

One thing about golf is you don't know why you play bad and why you play good. --George Archer

Have you ever noticed what golf spells backwards? --Al Boliska

If I'm on the course and lightning starts, I get inside fast.  If God wants to play through, let him. --Bob Hope

Golf is the most fun you can have without taking your clothes off. --Chi Chi Rodriguez

"After all, golf is only a game," said Millicent.  Women say these things without thinking.  It does not mean that there is a kink in their character.  They simply don't realise what they are saying. --P.G. Wodehouse, Order by Golf, 1922

When I putt, my emotions collide like tectonic plates.  It's left my memory circuits full of scars that won't heal. --Mac O'Grady

The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course. --Billy Graham

That son of a bitch was able to hole a putt over 60 feet of peanut brittle. --Lloyd Mangrum, about Bobby Locke

Golf is not, on the whole, a game for realists.  By its exactitudes of measurements it invites the attention of perfectionists. --Heywood Hale Broun

Isn't it fun to go out on the course and lie in the sun? --Bob Hope

His driving is unbelievable.  I don't go that far on my holidays. --Ian Baker-Finch, on John Daly

John certainly gives it a good hit, doesn't he?  My Sunday best is a Wednesday afternoon compared to him. --Nick Faldo, on John Daly

I never pray to God to make a putt.  I pray to God to help me react good if I miss a putt. --Chi Chi Rodriguez

Golf seems to me an arduous way to go for a walk.  I prefer to take the dogs out. --Princess Anne of Great Britain

One minute you're bleeding.  The next minute you're hemorrhaging.  The next minute you're painting the Mona Lisa. --Mac O'Grady, describing a typical round of golf

If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf. --Percey Boomer

Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing. --Ben Hogan

Yeah, after each of my downhill putts. --Homero Blancas, asked if he had any uphill putts

When you hear someone shout "You da man," if he ain't shouting at Arnold Palmer, then it ain't da man. --Ron Green, Charlotte Observer

Golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle. --Author Unknown

What's nice about our tour is you can't remember your bad shots. --Bob Bruce, about the senior tour

Golf is golf.  You hit the ball, you go find it.  Then you hit it again. --Lon Hinkle

To some golfers, the greatest handicap is the ability to add correctly. --Author Unknown

If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball. --Jack Lemmon

I play in the low 80s.  If it's any hotter than that, I won't play. --Joe E. Lewis

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. --Will Rogers

I don't like watching golf on TV.  I can't stand whispering. --David Brenner

One almost expects one of the players to peer into the monitor and politely request viewers to refrain from munching so loudly on cheese and crackers while the golfers are trying to reach the greens. --Pete Alfano

Golf without mistakes is like watching haircuts.  A dinner without wine. --Jim Murray

Men who would face torture without a word become blasphemous at the short fourteenth.  It is clear that the game of golf may well be included in that category of intolerable provocations which may legally excuse or mitigate behaviour not otherwise excusable. --A.P. Herbert, Misleading Cases, 1935

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and the families of the breed would be shipped off to the white slave corrals of Argentina. --H.L. Mencken

All I've got against it is that it takes you so far from the clubhouse. --Eric Linklater, Poet's Pub, 1929

Baseball players quit playing and they take up golf.  Basketball players quit, take up golf.  Football players quit, take up golf.  What are we supposed to take up when we quit? --George Archer

A golf course outside a big town serves an excellent purpose in that it segregates, as though a concentration camp, all the idle and idiot well-to-do. --Osbert Sitwell

If you want to take long walks, take long walks.  If you want to hit things with sticks, hit things with sticks.  But there's no excuse for combining the two and putting the results on TV.  Golf is not so much a sport as an insult to lawns. --National Lampoon, 1979

It's good sportsmanship not to pick up lost balls while they are still rolling. --Mark Twain

Don't play too much golf.  Two rounds a day are plenty. --Harry Vardon

Golf is an ineffectual attempt to put an elusive ball into an obscure hole with implements ill-adapted to the purpose. --Woodrow Wilson

A golfer's diet:  live on greens as much as possible. --Author Unknown

Gone golfin'... be back dark thirty. --Author Unknown

Born to golf.  Forced to work. --Author Unknown

My body is here, but my mind has already teed off. --Author Unknown

Find a man with both feet firmly on the ground and you've found a man about to make a difficult putt. --Fletcher Knebel

Golf and sex are the only things you can enjoy without being good at them. --Jimmy DeMaret

May thy ball lie in green pastures... and not in still waters. --Author Unknown

If I hit it right, it's a slice.  If I hit it left, it's a hook.  If I hit it straight, it's a miracle. --Author Unknown

If you call on God to improve the results of a shot while it is still in motion, you are using "an outside agency" and subject to appropriate penalties under the rules of golf. --Henry Longhurst

The difference between golf and government is that in golf you can't improve your lie. --George Deukmejian